Hawks Nest Wines of NZ

Hawks Nest Wines of NZ

As I promised earlier in a blog I will keep taking photos of one specific grape vine near our driveway at Hawks Nest so you can follow the seasonal changes of the vine. Today's shot shows some interesting little tiny bunches forming on the stems of the shoots of the vines. No, those are not little grapes alreadly forming. (I made that mistake the first year as we were watching the vines grow in the our first spring and our staff just laughed at me- the neophyte.) These little green bunches are the first budding of the flowers that will soon form to attract the bees to begin pollination. Yes, they do look like very minature grape bunches but that will soon change. The grapes actually form later in the summer.

All is well at the red shed of our winery and we got our last bit of 05 fermenting juice into cleaned barrels yesterday and all the wine is now settled to have slow aging in oak. We used 28 barrels for our 06 wine. Each barrel holds 225 liters or about 300 bottles of finished wine so we have 6300 liters aging now. That is 700 cases of 06 wine if we use and bled it all for release. That is a lot of good wine so we hope you will start to up you volume of intake for Hawks Nest Orchard Block Red Wine!!! :):):)

It is Fri afternoon and I am about to knock off for the weekend. Next we I will start offering samples of our new rose, 05 Merlot, and export 05 Cab Franc/Malbec blend to several local cafes and B and B's. It will have been four weeks since we bottled on next Thursday so that will be my first day to go around the valley and start to sell our wine. It will be really good to get some feedback from locals who have not yet tasted our export quality wine. (last year we sent all our best wine to Nashville so no one here got to taste what you have and can taste in Tennessee now-our small amount of remaining 04)

More next week on my initial sales attempts here for our new wines.

Dr Jim =still downunder

Hawks Nest Wines of NZ

Hawks Nest Wines of NZ

There is one thing very unique to New Zealand that one does not see in Tennessee. That is sheep shearing contests at local bar/pubs. As in the British Isles, rural New Zealand has public clubs in small villages that are still the gathering social centers for the locals. In Matakana Valley the place for fun and gossip has been the Matakana House Bar since 1903. In the photo of the front of the place enlarge the photo and you can see the little sign that says "est. 1903" located just under the word "House". Also note when you enlarge that photo that today is featured a red letter sign "shear a sheep, drink a pint, and eat a pie" For Kiwi's, a pie is not dessert but a meat or lamb pie. That is the local version of a burger and has been the meal of choice for local blokes countrywide forever!!! In the next photo you can see every one with their pies and pints watching a sheep shearer on the small stage. (Speights is a local "man's beer" who sponsor these events) This is sort of like Jack Daniels hosting barbeque cookoffs!!!

A good shearer can shear a sheep in under aminute. The record for one man working all day shearing sheep is 770 sheep. This is all by hand but with electric clips. Oh man, what a back breaking job. (30,000,000 are a lot of sheap to shear twice a year when you think about it!!!!!)

Anyway it was a fun way for us to get some local color over the NZ Labor Day start of summer holiday. From now on the locals will be outdoors a lot boating, diving, tramping, and hopefully drinking a lot of good wine such as Hawks Nest!! In the final photo you can see how we siphon off some of our barrel red wine to use for making Sangria punch which was a big hit over the weekend at our favorite cafe-Cosi's If you look closely at the end of the barrel you will see I have labeled it "Cosi's cooking wine" It is our left over last barrel of our 04 Merlot that we did not use to blend into our first release of Hawks Nest Orchard Block Red. We are glad that the last lonely barrel has now found a home in Matakana. The sangria that was made with it was very yummy and a big hit with all the sheep shearing crowd for sure!!!!

More soon;

Dr JIm -having fun down under

Hawks Nest Wines of NZ: Hawks Nest Wines of NZ

Hawks Nest Wines of NZ: Hawks Nest Wines of NZ

Well, we have had a good week here in Matakana. I had another birthday on the 20th and go a nice telescope from Sandra for the event. Since we live up on a high hill overlooking a nice beach and the sea I will have lots to look at. This weekend is the traditional beginning of summer NZ weekend-their Labor weekend. So, lots of targets are down on the beach for viewing. In the photo we are having a little toast over the gift. I hope to see some "beachmushrooms" down below this summer when it gets hotter.

We had our first bulk wine order this week for a full barrel of wine. That was cool as a local new cafe is using it as their house wine. For the holiday Saturday today I went down to help out with sales and to sample the wine, food, and ambiance . They made a Sangria wine punch out of it and had it in a big white trash bin. In the photo you can see me in shades and my Bob Marley black tee shirt to get into the mood of the start of the NZ summer all ready to pour some of the brew. It actually was pretty good and a lot was poured over the holiday Sat. Good fun was had by all!!!

More soon from sumertime downunder

DR JIm

PS: If you live in or near Nashville be sure to plan to go to the Wine Down Main Street coming up soon in Franklin. There we be lots of wine and food to sample and Lipman Brothers will be pouring samples of our remaining Hawks Nest Orchard Block Red 2004. There is still a bit for sale in Nashville so pop in your local bottle shop and get some for Halloween.

Hawks Nest Wines of NZ: Hawks Nest Wines of NZ

Hawks Nest Wines of NZ: Hawks Nest Wines of NZ

Well, no photos for this blog post as my son has borrowed our digital camera for a week and thus I am not able to incude shots this time. Our grapes are really growing in the nice spring sunshine that we have had here in Matakana. Since we got the wine all bottled last week we have been less stressed at the vineyard. Now we just wait a bit for the vines to start growing then we will go through and do shoot thinning. That is just what it sounds like. We walk along and pinch off new vine shoots that are low on the trunk. (the darn grape vine is always trying to send out more vines and we have to stop that) We only want vine shoots starting to grow where we have them trained to grow and all the rest get pinched off by hand. This is really lazy work as you just walk along and pinch each small new bud that you don't want off with gloved fingers. (gloves optional but the thick cordons and main trunk can cause small cuts as you pinch over and over with your fingers) This is very specialized treatment of course and never done in big commercial vineyards. This is all about our small size and dedication to the best of the best vines and thus grapes later in the growing season.

On the 05 wine front our export wine passed inspection by the NZ wine export board yesterday and thus now our shipment to Lipman Brothers in Nashville who is our wholesaler is all set. Our wine for export--only 128 cases in all- is all wrapped up and sitting in a warehouse at the dock. We are booked to have it sail on OCt 21st to LA. The trip is 19 days they say and there the wine clears customs and goes by truck to Nashville.
I think I mentioned in a past blog that NZ has a panel of wine experts who do blind tastings of all wine submitted for export and will not certify bad wine as allowable to be shipped. We knew our wine was primo so we were not worried about getting export approval but it was nice to get that last bit of paper yesterday and fax it on to the freight forwarder. So, the wine is all set and now it must travel. We are a bit disappointed to have taken this long to get it on a boat to the states as that will mean it will not be in stores near you (if you live in Middle Tenn. that is) until just before Christmas since it has to "rest and settle a bit" in the warehouse in Nashville before being released.

THE GOOD NEWS IS THAT YOU CAN MOST PROBABLY PLAN A NEW YEARS TOAST IN NASHVILLE WITH OUR 2005 HAWKS NEST ORCHARD BLOCK RED.!!!!

Remember!!! The best things in life are worth waiting- so be patient.

More soon with updated photos of our growing grapes.

DR Jim downunder

Hawks Nest Wines of NZ: Hawks Nest Wines of NZ

Hawks Nest Wines of NZ:

As promised here are two more shots from the bottling plant this week. Pleasant Valley Winery has been in business over 100 years in West Auckland. They have a long history and reputation as THE place to get quality bottling for small volumes of wine. That is Sandra and I standing by the bottling line like proud new parents as our freshly bottled wine comes down the small line. First the wine is pumped into holding tanks and then the new bottles are flash sterilized. The wine is passed slowly through organic millipore sterile filters to cleanse the wine of paticulate matter ( such as small parts of grape skins). Stephan, the owner there, said our wine was nice and clean and had a nice good solid color. After filtering, the wine is pumped into the new clean bottles and covered with a small amount of argon gas just as the cork is mechanically popped into the bottle and the foil applied. The argon gas is stable and inert and by being infused in the top of the bottle between the wine and the cork keeps oxygen out of the wine. This reduces the risk of oxidation of the wine with long cellaring times. We did the wine bottling this way this year as we know this 2005 Hawks Nest Red is well worth keeping for several years and we want it to age in the best possible fashion.

So, now we have 238 cases of our new 2005 Malbac/Cab Franc blend. We are shipping 128 cases of wine this next week to Lipman Brothers in Nashville and the rest we will sell here in NZ. ( if we sell out in Tennessee we can then ship more over from here if our local allocations are not used up here first.

In the second photo you can see the cartons of our newly labeled and packed wine on the pallet ready to be wrapped for shipment. Note that we are using the new style flat case boxes. These boxes allow the wine to always be stored on it's side so the cork does not dry out over long storage periods. This is another move that we instituted this year to aid in preserving the wine until the bottle is opened. We also have used better quality corks this year so when you first open one of our new 05 wines (hopefully later this year and into the future you will have the pleasure of and the need to open many of these bottles!!!) you will see that the cork is solid and will expand to a bigger diameter than most wine corks you encounter.

So, now what is next in the wine business? Well, we just sent 3 fresh of our new wine bottles to the NZ Wine export quality board. They test our wine for alcohol content, any contaminants, or poisons. (a post 9/11 USA import requirement). They also have a panel of experts on wine who do a blind tasting our of wine to determine that our wine is suitable in quality to be allowed to be officially exported from NZ. (no bad wine is allowed to go overseas--not a bad idea actually as NZ is known for it's good wines and wants to keep it that way). After we pass that test, we get a Certificate for Export and our wine is "good to go". We have the wine reserved with a "supply chain manager" (just like with medicine, you have to learn a new lingo in this wine business-this means a shipping agent) to go to LA on a ship called Hansa Sonderburg that sails from Auckland on Oct 21st. So, the wine should take 19 days by sea, clear US customs in LA, and then get trucked to Nashville. Lipmans will let the wine "rest" in their warehouse for a bit before they will release it for sale in Middle Tennessee. It looks like the wine should be available to Tennesseans by Christmas time--(hopefully it won't get lost on the way!!!)

Now Sandra and I feel relieved to have the 05 wine all settled and finished from this end. WE now will turn our attention to vine management for the 07 grapes and to keeping the 06 wine in barrels topped up and slowly aging. We have some good 06 wine in the barrels but that is for a future report. So Bye for now!!

DR JIM relieved downunder

Hawks Nest Wines of NZ: Hawks Nest Wines of NZ

Hawks Nest Wines of NZ:

Well, today I became an expert on wine bottling. (see one, do one, then teach one we always say in medicine).
Early this AM the wine tanker truck with 5 separate storage transport containers inside the tanker came to our winery. The back of the truck can be seen in the photo with the white labels above the 5 tank valves visible. It turns out to be pretty simple to the casual observer that I was today. John, our wine maker carefully pumps off each barrel (one barrel=225 liters of wine) into the correct tanks ( that is him in dark sweater holding the pump handle down in one wine barrel sucking out the last of the goodies) and oversees the proper labeling and mixing for the blends of wine. (60/40 is our US export Orchard Block Red Malbec/Cab Franc blend and he got it right today) We trucked off 400 liters of rose, double that for our NZ Hawks Bay Merlot 05 wine that we will sell only in NZ, and then the liters for our valuable export blend of our Malbac/Cab Franc.

We loaded up the wine shipping pallets on the back of our ute and followed the tanker about an hour south to the contract bottler-Pleasant Valley Winery. ( we had to get special plastic new pallets for shipping our wine to the states as no wood or straw is allowed into America as packing material-it is good to know that the US works to keep the bugs and pests out) Pleasant Valley is in a lovely valley west of Auckland and have been in business for 110 years and specialize in small volume runs of careful bottling, labeling, and packing for shipping.

In the next blog, I will show some shots from the bottling line. We noted several very famous and hard to get NZ wines sitting around in the bottling warehouse so we felt happy having our wine "share space" with some well known quality NZ wines. Maybe soon our wine will also be know as one of NZ's small quality vineyards. That is one reason that this year we are keeping some of our export wine back here in NZ to sell. We want to show the area locals what we can do with wine from our grapes and we also wanted to enter our wine in some tasting competitions. To be able to enter a NZ wine tasting event the wine has to actually be commercially available for sale in NZ. So, now we can see if we can do well in winetasting events and maybe get some of those little stars to stick on our labels. I suggested to Sandra we just buy some little gold and silver stars in a kids party store here and put them on our bottles without the trouble of entering tasting events but she nixed that right away-just joking:):):)

Anyway, now I can talk intelligently about bottling wine at future wine events that I host as I have "been there and done that"

Now we have to get this good wine on a boat to Tennessee!!! Look for the wine there in about two months if it is not a slow boat!!

Dr Jim. still downunder

More soon